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Astronaut joins private space race
By Richard Stenger
(CNN) -- A professional astronaut who almost rode into orbit onboard a space shuttle hopes to achieve his lifelong dream on a less conventional craft -- an amateur-built rocket designed to win a private space race. The astronaut, Yaroslav "Yarko" Pustovyi, trained with NASA for a science mission on the shuttle in 1997, and is one of six astronaut candidates selected by a Canadian team competing for the X-Prize. The team, Canadian Arrow, is vying for the $10 million award, promised to the first private team that builds and flies a safe, reusable spacecraft. "Yarko says he looks forward to realizing the dream of his life and his professional aspiration, to fly into space," Canadian Arrow team leader Geoff Sheerin said Thursday of Pustovyi, a physicist and astronaut with the Ukraine National Space Agency, which has little hope of sending anyone into space soon. The London, Ontario-based group, which hopes to beat out 20 or so teams from around the world, announced the selection of its private astronaut corps on Thursday. They include pilots, engineers, military veterans and Pustovyi, who served as backup for fellow countryman Leonid Kadenyuk, a mission specialist onboard space shuttle Columbia in November and December 1997. That 16-day flight included Kalpana Chawla, one of seven astronauts who died when Columbia disintegrated during re-entry in February. Canadian Arrow chose its space fliers from more than 100 aspirants, who included high-tech professionals as well as teachers and a cab driver. "It has confirmed for me that there are people in every walk of life who want to travel to space," Sheerin said in a statement. More than 20 entrants from five countries are competing for the X-Prize, which requires a team to safely send and return a three-person crew 62 miles (100 kilometers) high twice within two weeks in the same vehicle. Sporting names like the Gauchito, the Lucky Seven and the Green Arrow, some craft are the work of shoestring operations led by space hobbyists. Others employ stables of well-known rocket scientists To take off and land, they intend to use runways, launch pads, airplane taxis and the sea; for fuel, liquid oxygen, natural gas, kerosene engines and turbo fans. The St. Louis, Missouri-based X-Prize Foundation started the X-Prize in 1996 to promote private space travel. In October, the group announced a January 1, 2005, deadline to claim the prize.
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